Travel

[aurnia]

Where've you guys gone these days?? Another country, your grandma's house across town, etc let's share it : D!

previously, i went to osaka and toyko. my last trip was my second trip to osaka, i really enjoy it there! i havent spent much time in tokyo vs osaka so i hope to go to tokyo again in september... ;^;

buuut ! im about to go to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks for the first time and im pretty excited ngl >_< my mum used to live there for awhile so i want to see what its like for myself.... if anyone has any recommendations please tell me! or if anyone lives in hk, lets meet!

[jellysundae]

 As I was just wandering through my Photobucket, here's a pic of when I got married to a dolphin in Italy in 1980!

He picked me out of the crowd (after swimming round wearing a giant pair of glasses to assist with the process, lol) I threw a rubber rose into the water for him that he brought back and handed to me, it was all so romantic! *wipes nostalgic tear*

The "Dolphinarium" was a big thing in Italy at that point, clearly. Now I worry about their welfare but that one seemed happy and healthy at least.

[hystrangea]

On 5/27/2018 at 9:01 PM, aurnia said:

previously, i went to osaka and toyko. my last trip was my second trip to osaka, i really enjoy it there! i havent spent much time in tokyo vs osaka so i hope to go to tokyo again in september... ;^;

Me too!! I went to Osaka earlier this month and am going to Tokyo at the end of June!! Osaka is so much fun! I really enjoyed eating soft cream and playing drumming games in the game centers. I haven't been to Tokyo before but I'm looking forward to seeing some awesome fashion on Harajuku street! June is the rainy season in Japan so I'm hoping that the weather will cooperate with us at least for part of the trip. 

[aurnia]

13 hours ago, jellysundae said:

 As I was just wandering through my Photobucket, here's a pic of when I got married to a dolphin in Italy in 1980!

He picked me out of the crowd (after swimming round wearing a giant pair of glasses to assist with the process, lol) I threw a rubber rose into the water for him that he brought back and handed to me, it was all so romantic! *wipes nostalgic tear*

The "Dolphinarium" was a big thing in Italy at that point, clearly. Now I worry about their welfare but that one seemed happy and healthy at least.

oh my gosh wow OMG HAHA thats so cute!!!! i love thus photo omg he looks very happy >< what was italy like??? ive never been before, it sounds like itd have good food haha

41 minutes ago, hystrangea said:

Me too!! I went to Osaka earlier this month and am going to Tokyo at the end of June!! Osaka is so much fun! I really enjoyed eating soft cream and playing drumming games in the game centers. I haven't been to Tokyo before but I'm looking forward to seeing some awesome fashion on Harajuku street! June is the rainy season in Japan so I'm hoping that the weather will cooperate with us at least for part of the trip. 

oh wow! i would say if i was going to japan in june for you to come meet me HAHAA but this time im not sadly TT__TT how was osaka for you? i really like orange street and tbh i just like the general atmosphere of everything~ omg have fun in tokyo! if you want any reccomendations i can give them? what do you like/like to do?  : 3

[jellysundae]

6 hours ago, aurnia said:

oh my gosh wow OMG HAHA thats so cute!!!! i love thus photo omg he looks very happy >< what was italy like??? ive never been before, it sounds like itd have good food haha 

Well, I wonder how accurate my 9 year old's memories will be, lol. I'd hope Italy's come a long way as a tourist destination since. >_< We stayed in Cattolica which is a small town on the Adriatic coast, WOW is that water salty! I mean the Mediterranean is a lot saltier than open ocean water, and the Adriatic's a back water of the Med so getting a mouthful of that was a bit of a shock. My swimming improved MASSIVELY during those two weeks splashing around in very salty water though! I didn't notice until I went back into the school pool once we were home again and realised I was doing way better than normal.

The food was nothing special, breakfast was a "continental" one, so bread and jam, lol. White bread that tasted like it had no salt in it, and the milk I was given to drink was sterilised/UHT so it tasted weird. xD The evening meal were perfectly decent, but nothing fancy.  Only vague memories of what we got. I remember pasta ofc, and veal a few times which I'd never had before (and not since either actually!). I DO remember there was only 2 options to choose from. I only remember this because one day one choice was lasagne and I didn't pick that but mum did (I can't remember what I had) I tried a bit of hers and it was really nice so every day after that I came hopefully down to dinner, wanting lasagne to be one of the options again, but it never was. Woe!

Every day dessert was a scoop or two of ice cream in the ugly aluminium dishes all hotels used at that point, the ice cream was nothing special either, Italy, you should be ashamed of yourself.

For drinks you got a choice of sparkling or still bottled water, lemon or orangeade (and nothing like Orangina that you'd heard of). You bought a full-size bottle and whatever you didn't drink was put to one side and you got it back the next day. You know, thinking about it . . . it might even have been just left on your table, and we thought that was good!!

The lifts in the hotel were breaking all the time, we were fairly high up, 6th floor maybe? Which also meant that our floor often didn't have any water, and when we did what came out of the taps was often all rusty.

Am I doing a good job selling Italy as a destination? Am I?!

Thing is though, it was still a lovely holiday, basically because we didn't know any better, but still, lol.

Even the rain in Italy is nice. Big fat warm raindrops, it fascinated me. The money fascinated me too! The fact that £1 = approx. a gazillion Lira. The Lira denominations went down so small that the shops often couldn't give all the change people were owed in money, so cashiers had a big tub of sweets on the top of their till and you'd be given a few of those as well as coins. You can imagine how much this thrilled a 9 yr. old! I guess the advent of the Euro would have killed that cute tradition.

 

[luckyhelen]

Mexico City. A few years ago I was sitting at work and saw an alert from TravelZoo about roundtrip tickets from LA to Buenos Aires for $300 (!), all in. I forwarded it to my husband, just for his information. Next message I get from him is - he bought them because he could not not buy them. *eyeroll

Anyways, we went to Argentina and had an amazing time. But, the flight over was through Mexico City, with overnight stay. We didn’t think anything about it. But, when we landed there and came out, we were surprised how beautiful the city looked, especially the grand historical buildings, how friendly the people were, and how excellent the food was. There, over a plate of some delicious food and with a Mariachi band playing in the background, we promised to ourselves to come back some day.

That day is going to be this fall.

[Greywindd]

On 3/13/2019 at 3:58 PM, joombo said:

I just returned from my trip to Calgary, AB. I checked out a few local breweries, visited both Fish Creek Park and Nose Hill Park and after all sightseeings visit local Escape 60 here is link https://www.escape60.ca/. I'm fond of escape room games with cool decorations, riddles and interesting plot. It was great journey. Want to come back again!

I have never ventured that far into Canada but I always feel refreshed every time I do cross the border; I'm from the east coast of USA. I had met 2 people from Edmonton on both times I visited Japan back in 2014 and 2017 so I must go to AB one day. Any other recommended cities that I should check out? I've only been to Montreal and Toronto.